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|3.22.05 @ 4:14PM|#
Philosopher Robert Veatch thinks that whole brain death is too restrictive. He wants to define death as the death of neocortical functions in the brain. The neocortex is the wrinkled outer layer of the brain which is thought to be responsible for higher level cognitive functions, such as language, learning, memory, and complex thought.
If that's how Brain Death is defined, then I know a few posters on H&R who ought to have their feeding tubes pulled.
|3.22.05 @ 4:20PM|#
So far no one has invented a consciousness detector.
Solipsism is not falsifiable, so I would not have much hope for one coming out... ever.
|3.22.05 @ 4:43PM|#
Ronald Bailey,
Why do yoy hate God? :)
|3.22.05 @ 4:46PM|#
Ron,
Thanks! This is some of the most rational and analytical writing I've yet seen on the subject of Terri Schiavo and whether her feeding tube should be removed.
How many of the politicians and talking heads out there have even taken the time to educate themselves to this level?
How many Reasonoids?
|3.22.05 @ 4:53PM|#
Smacky,
I am perfectly capable of feeding myself.
Well, as long as Mrs. Prole cooks.
SP
|3.22.05 @ 4:59PM|#
I think the point comes back around to what a loved one perceives as personhood. No amount of scientific evidence is going to convince Schiavo's parents or their supporters that Terri is not longer a viable person deserving of their love, care and attention. Given that sentiment it might be best to craft some sort of 'benefit of the doubt' law to allow for guardianship to pass to a party that shows a compelling emotional need to keep an indididual alive provided that party is willing to bear the cost of sustainment. Personally, I find such an overwhelming need to be ghoulish and contrary to the tenents of any major religion [indeed, the thought of keeping a soul mortally chained to a spent husk of life seems a form of damnation opposed to any sense of spiritual salvation; one that paradoxically cancels out the very life affirming convenant of such beliefs themselves]. However, despite how I might feel about it others feel differently, so perhaps the law should reflect that.
|3.22.05 @ 5:18PM|#
Quote from Louis Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition:
The entire breadth of this issue is political control and posture. Except for the two sides of the family involved, no one gives a damn about Terri. She's just a pawn in their game of control.
And if the Schindlers weren't religious control freaks, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
I'm not intending to knock religious beliefs. I'm merely lamenting the Traditional Values Coalition, and the Christian Coalition, and the rest.
|3.22.05 @ 5:29PM|#
This letter posted at Salon, voices the religous argument much better than my attempt above. I'm an atheist myself but I always thought if one actually believed in eternal salvation this is the kind of viewpoint they'd express:
II Corinthians 5:8 -- We are confident, yes, well, pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.
As a pro-life (antiabortion and anti-death penalty) Christian who is not a member of the religious right and as a person whose own mother has recently suffered serious neurological injury, I find this case completely appalling. The president and Congress have drastically overstepped the constitutional limits placed upon the executive and legislative branches of government. The party of "states' rights" has desecrated the principles of federalism and the sanctity of marriage. Mrs. Schiavo made her wishes clear to her husband. Those wishes were verified by her best friend and confirmed in the courts of the state of Florida. Contrary to the so-called conservative view, keeping someone alive via artificial means (and yes, a feeding tube is artificial life support) against their will is not biblically accurate.
For Christians like Mrs. Schiavo, death is not to be feared. The people who have compared this case to "starving a dog to death" are completely ignorant of medical, legal and religious facts. I have had a relative die as a result of a prior refusal to be on a feeding tube. I can assure you it was not the horrific scene that Tom DeLay and Bill Frist have fallaciously propagandized. Every year, hundreds of thousands of religious people have DNRs, reject certain medical procedures, and make living wills prohibiting life support because they would prefer to have eternal life in heaven rather than suffer needlessly on earth.
My mother has reiterated her request to not be kept alive via artificial means for an extended period of time. If that event arises, my family, unlike Mrs. Schiavo's parents, will unselfishly honor her wishes and let her peacefully go to the Lord.
|3.22.05 @ 5:45PM|#
Brain death occurs when one becomes a registered Democrat.
|3.22.05 @ 5:57PM|#
Brain death occures, as every married man knows, when your mother-in-law starts talking to you. :)
|3.22.05 @ 6:02PM|#
Brain death occurs when one becomes a registered Democrat.
Or continues to support Republicans despite the evidence that they are not the party of small government, fiscal responsibility, federalism, the Constitution's checks and balances, civil rights protections....
|3.22.05 @ 6:03PM|#
"Solipsism is not falsifiable"
That's not exactly true. While philosophical pondering of solipsism has stagnated over the past couple of centuries, current understanding of the brain, including yes, a limited understanding of the various aspect of conciousness indicate that it is. True solipsism as opposed to feigned can be noted on an MRI with some simple diagnostic tests. Theory of mind (ToM) is the name given to the ability to attribute mental states and intentions to others. It starts to show in properly developing individuals around ages 2 to 4. Not including those youngsters who haven't developed this ability yet, solipsism can be seen in a variety of disorders including schizophrenia and autism. The underlying neural pathways to this ability (or lack thereof) are still being teased out but enough invovled areas have been identified that falsifying some one's claims to solipsism is possible.
Here's just one of many papers on the subject that gives some insight into ToM. Sorry I don't have a definitive link handy, but look around and you'll find plenty more.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=554116
|3.22.05 @ 6:31PM|#
All you are saying is that people attribute mental states to behaviour. That's an assumption. All cognition is via the self. It is *I*, who is viewing those MRI scans. My treating certain signs in those scans as indicative of other selves, is doing the same old: elevating correlations to causations. Solipsism can't be disproven unless there's an hitherto undiscovered new mode of existence where multiple selves share experience. That is such an alien concept that any more speculation will be nonsensical.
|3.22.05 @ 6:42PM|#
On the other hand:
It occurs to me that many religious people believe that your life is not your own but an instrument of God's and that you have no choice but to live as long as you possibly can regardless of whatever pain, suffering or financial distress it may cause to yourself or anyone else. It also occurs to me that some people are just friggin' nuts. No wonder I'm an atheist ;-)
|3.22.05 @ 6:44PM|#
The MRI scans your brain, the brain gives you away. When the difference in activity between the response to two stimuli is neccessary and sufficient to see two distinct, predictable responses, you are out of philosophical wiggle room. You can still make attempts to deny it, but you can also claim bullets fired out of guns merely show high correlation to gunshot wounds in people they are aimed at. Understanding of the physical aspects of conciousness, even at this early stage, has caught up with many of the old philosophical daisy chains.
|3.22.05 @ 6:45PM|#
The Uniform Death Act is interesting because it's by no means uniformly accepted. Whether or not you are considered "dead" at a given point varies from state to state. It varies even more from country to country.
France's National Academy of Medicine considers you dead after no EEG activity for 48 hours, twice that of most US states. Russia takes the prize for efficiency, as death is pronounced after a flat EEG of five minutes. (As of the early 90s, anyway).
So depending on your location, you could be dead and buried in Russia, comatose but not legally dead in Maryland or clinging to life and resuscitated in France.
I know certain religious interests like to have all their major categories of life, death, personhood, the universe and everything to be cut and dry, but it just ain't that way bubba. The more science progresses and makes this fact obvious, the more the religious right will violently fight it in schools, universities and ICUs. Terri Schaivo is only the beginning.
|3.22.05 @ 6:48PM|#
"That is such an alien concept that any more speculation will be nonsensical."
It may actually be quite intimately familiar. See Thomas Nagel's "Brain Bisection and the Unity of Consciousness."
|3.22.05 @ 6:53PM|#
""How many of the politicians and talking heads out there have even taken the time to educate themselves to this level?
How many Reasonoids?""
I read Judge Greer's court decision. And I've seen a jpg of the PET scan done of Mrs Schiavo's brain. The former is reasonable, factual and complete. The latter shows that doing a functional MRI is pointless because there is nothing there to look at.
It'd be like complaining that a mechanic is unwilling to give your car a tune up when in fact your car has no engine.
I can just imagine:
Mecahnic: Dude I can't do a tune up cause your engine is missing.
Dude: What, of course there is an engine, when I turn the key it makes noise. it just needs a tune up.
Mechanic: Thats the starter turning over sir. Whoever stole your engine didn't take the battery or the starter.
Dude: But there is an engine see!
Mechanic: Thatz the transmission bell housing sir.
Dude: Aren't you even going to hook up the disagnostic computer? Thats the standard thing to do.
Mechanic: Why? You need an new engine.
Dude: You're trying to cheat me!
Mechanic: Woah dude wait a minute!
|3.22.05 @ 6:55PM|#
I hope not, but I see no reason to think otherwise.
In 1993-04, the Democrats were drunk on their own power, and overstepped their bounds. They inadvertently ignited a Republican revolution. In theory, history could repeat itself. I guess we'll see.
|3.22.05 @ 7:16PM|#
See Thomas Nagel's "Brain Bisection and the Unity of Consciousness."
Derek Parfit's work on personhood and the split-brain experiments is also worth checking out.
|3.22.05 @ 7:16PM|#
The MRI scans your brain, the brain gives you away. When the difference in activity between the response to two stimuli is neccessary and sufficient to see two distinct, predictable responses, you are out of philosophical wiggle room.
We still haven't progressed past square one. How does any amount of observation reveal consciousness?
|3.22.05 @ 7:30PM|#
Of course we are only at square one, scratching the surface. But just as solipsism is now categorizable and claims of such are in somes cases falsifiable, progress is being made.
Certain aspects of conciousness are beginning to be peeled of and understood. As a whole, we are still in the dark on much, but the idea of it as one complete whole rather than made up of identifiable parts is now thought to be oversimplistic be many who study. Just as vision was once thought to be one simple whole, we now known it as made up of distinct identifiable parts, not easily teased out by the user.
Francis Crick (before his death) and Kristof Koch made a number of identifications of aspects of consciousness through breaking down the visual system and determine what parts of the brain where involved in the consciously notable parts of vision. The investigation of the hard problem of consciousness is only scratching the surface, but it is advancing steadily. There's far more info out there than I could do justice to here (if at all), but it's well worth a look.
|3.22.05 @ 7:38PM|#
claims of such are in somes cases falsifiable
I don't see how.
The hard problem is fundamentally different than others. Science, currently is an empiricist philosophy, relying on falsifiability and consistency. All of which don't mean anything since consciousness of others is not an empirical phenomenon.
|3.22.05 @ 8:43PM|#
" We still haven't progressed past square one. How does any amount of observation reveal consciousness?"
If Terri Schiavo's consciousness can exist without a brain, why would letting her body die harm it?
|3.23.05 @ 2:35AM|#
chthus at 06:03 PM:
The underlying neural pathways to this ability (or lack thereof) are still being teased out but enough involved areas have been identified that falsifying some one's claims to solipsism is possible
But I think that what anondamide at 04:20 PM was contending (any way, I will even if he/she wasn't) is that one's *own* solipsism is not falsifiable.
There are many reasons for me to think that solipsism is not the nature of my existence, but it is not strictly falsifiable since it makes a causal claim on *all* of my perceptions.
R C Dean|3.23.05 @ 11:14AM|#
Given that sentiment it might be best to craft some sort of 'benefit of the doubt' law to allow for guardianship to pass to a party that shows a compelling emotional need to keep an indididual alive provided that party is willing to bear the cost of sustainment.
Because this does not address the critical question of what the patient herself wanted. If, as the court found, Ms.Schiavo would have wanted to tube pulled, then giving control over her care to someone who disregards her wishes is not the right thing to do.